From Dubai to Shanghai: A Faculty Milestone in Contemporary Design
The American University in Dubai (AUD) has built its reputation on connecting students to global cultural conversations, and its faculty continue to prove what that connection looks like in practice. Yalun Li, Assistant Professor of Architecture in the university’s School of Architecture, Art & Design, was selected to co-curate the fourth season of the “Next Cultural Producer” program in Shanghai, working alongside curator Qian Mengni. The result of their collaboration, Carrier Bags from the Peripherals, is currently on view at the Power Station of Art (PSA) from July 16 to October 8, 2026.
For anyone weighing where to study architecture, art, or design, this achievement offers a useful signal. A strong design education is shaped by educators who remain active contributors to their fields — professionals who exhibit, curate, publish, and build, then bring those experiences directly into the studio. Li’s selection for one of Shanghai’s most closely watched curatorial programs is exactly the kind of credential worth examining when comparing design schools.
Want to experience this environment firsthand? Book a campus appointment at AUD to meet faculty, tour the studios, and ask how practitioner-led teaching shapes coursework.
Inside the “Next Cultural Producer” Program
The “Next Cultural Producer” program was co-initiated by the Power Station of Art — China’s first state-run museum dedicated to contemporary art — and the CHANEL Culture Fund. Its mission is twofold: support emerging cultural producers at pivotal moments in their careers, and provide a platform for new ideas and interdisciplinary practices in contemporary culture.
Each season, the program invites proposals and selects a winning concept to be developed into a full-scale exhibition. Li and Mengni’s proposal earned that selection for the fourth season — a competitive recognition that places both curators, and by extension the institutions they represent, within an international network of museums, funders, and cultural producers.
Why Interdisciplinary Practice Matters
Contemporary culture rarely respects disciplinary boundaries. Architects collaborate with writers, designers work alongside social researchers, and exhibitions blend film, text, sound, and built form. By explicitly rewarding interdisciplinary practices, the program reflects how the creative industries now operate — and how tomorrow’s design graduates will need to work. Students who train in environments where faculty navigate these crossings gain an early, practical understanding of collaboration across fields.
Carrier Bags from the Peripherals: The Concept Behind the Shanghai Exhibition
The intellectual foundation of the exhibition is the “carrier bag” theory proposed by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. In her well-known essay, Le Guin questioned the dominance of the heroic, linear narrative — the story of conflict, conquest, and resolution — and pointed instead to one of humanity’s oldest tools: the container. Before the weapon, she argued, came the carrier bag, the vessel used to gather, hold, and transport what sustains daily life.
Li and Mengni adopt this idea as a working method. Rather than organizing the exhibition around a single linear storyline, Carrier Bags from the Peripherals brings together fragments of everyday life, inviting audiences to consider the connections between personal experience and the wider world. The “peripherals” of the title signal a deliberate attention to what usually sits at the edges of attention: the ordinary, the overlooked, the things we carry.
From Literary Theory to Curatorial Framework
Translating a literary theory into an exhibition is a demanding curatorial exercise. It requires deciding what “fragments of everyday life” look like as objects, images, texts, and spaces; determining how visitors should encounter them; and shaping what the accumulation of those encounters ultimately produces. This is precisely the kind of conceptual-to-physical reasoning that architecture and design education aims to develop, which makes the project a live demonstration of the skills taught in design studios.
Translating Theory into Space: The Exhibition Design
The exhibition design, developed by Li’s own studio, translates the carrier bag concept into physical space. An embracing structure inspired by the form of a “carrier bag” divides the exhibition into interior and peripheral zones, giving visitors a choreographed spatial journey rather than a simple sequence of rooms.
Visitors begin at the periphery. There, a news report and a piece of fictional writing are presented across the outer walls in a fragmented format — texts encountered in pieces, requiring the viewer to assemble meaning. Only then do guests move inward.
An Embracing, Textile-Lined Enclosure
At the center, wooden structures form a folded, elliptical enclosure lined with soft felt. The contrast is deliberate: rigid timber framing against a tactile, sound-absorbing surface creates an intimate interior that holds 31 multidisciplinary works. The architecture itself performs the theory — a container that gathers diverse contents and holds them together for viewers to examine.
For students of architecture and interior design, the project is a compact lesson in how form, material, and circulation can carry meaning. The enclosure is not decoration; it is the argument of the exhibition made physical.
31 Works, Many Voices: Highlights from the Exhibition
The 31 works gathered inside the enclosure span multiple disciplines and practices, consistent with the program’s interdisciplinary brief. Among them is Dunes Dictionary, a work by Dunes Workshop, a collective co-founded by Li. Its inclusion underscores a theme that runs through the entire exhibition: knowledge assembled collectively, entry by entry, rather than handed down from a single authoritative source — a “dictionary” built the way a carrier bag is filled.
Public Programs Extend the Conversation
The exhibition is accompanied by a series of public programs exploring its themes. A highlight is a dialogue featuring acclaimed South Korean author Kim Ae-ran, whose fiction similarly attends to ordinary lives and the small, sustained acts of daily living. Programs like this extend the exhibition beyond its walls and model the kind of public intellectual engagement that leading design institutions increasingly embrace.
Stay close to these conversations: follow AUD’s news page for updates on faculty projects, exhibitions, and events across the university’s schools.
What Professor Li’s Achievement Means for Design Students
Why should a curatorial project in Shanghai matter to a student deciding where to study architecture or design in Dubai? Three reasons stand out.
- Learning from active practitioners. Faculty who curate, exhibit, and build bring current methods, real networks, and unresolved questions into the classroom. Studio critiques become richer when the critic’s own work is being tested on an international stage.
- Global context, local study. Design problems are increasingly transnational. A professor moving between Dubai and Shanghai carries perspectives on materials, audiences, and institutions that enrich coursework — and can open doors for students through recommendations, collaborations, and introductions.
- Theory applied in public. It is one thing to discuss narrative theory in a seminar; it is another to watch a professor convert Le Guin’s essay into timber, felt, and text on a museum scale. Applied theory is the core promise of a strong design education.
Studying Architecture, Art, and Design at the American University in Dubai
AUD’s School of Architecture, Art & Design offers a portfolio that mirrors the interdisciplinary spirit of Li’s exhibition. Undergraduate students can pursue the Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch.), the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design, or the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communication. At the graduate level, the Master of Urban Design and Digital Environments (M.U.D.D.E.) extends the school’s reach into the digital and urban questions shaping cities today.
Dubai itself functions as both case study and canvas. A city defined by rapid transformation, ambitious architecture, and a dense mix of cultures offers design students immediate, first-hand material — from construction sites and museums to galleries and design weeks. Studying design in Dubai means working inside one of the world’s most active urban laboratories, with faculty whose practices connect that laboratory to cities like Shanghai.
Ready to explore your options? Explore the School of Architecture, Art & Design programs, or submit your application online to begin the admissions process.
Plan Your Visit: Exhibition Details at a Glance
- Exhibition: Carrier Bags from the Peripherals
- Curators: Yalun Li (Assistant Professor of Architecture, American University in Dubai) and Qian Mengni
- Venue: Power Station of Art (PSA), Shanghai
- Dates: July 16 – October 8, 2026
- Program: Fourth season of “Next Cultural Producer,” co-initiated by PSA and the CHANEL Culture Fund
- Highlights: 31 multidisciplinary works, including Dunes Dictionary by Dunes Workshop; public programs featuring author Kim Ae-ran
For travelers planning a Shanghai itinerary before early October 2026, the exhibition offers a worthwhile stop for anyone interested in contemporary curation, spatial design, or the afterlives of Le Guin’s ideas in visual culture.
Where Curation, Architecture, and Teaching Meet
Li’s Shanghai exhibition is more than an individual honor. It demonstrates the model of faculty practice that the American University in Dubai promotes: educators who operate simultaneously as teachers, designers, and cultural producers, and who allow each role to inform the others. Students in AUD’s design studios learn from people whose work is currently on view in one of Asia’s leading contemporary art museums — a reminder that design education is strongest when it stays connected to the living, ongoing production of culture.
For prospective students, the takeaway is practical. When comparing programs, look beyond brochures and rankings: examine what faculty are making, exhibiting, and publishing; ask how that practice enters the studio; and visit campuses to judge the environment directly.
Take the next step: submit an academic program inquiry to receive detailed information about admissions and the School of Architecture, Art & Design, or review scholarship options to understand how an AUD education can fit your plans.
